Thursday, December 30, 2010

The Wikileaks revelations unleashed the usual media furor of partially verified fact, unreflective opinion, speculation based on rumor, all ad nauseam through the twenty-four hour news cycle, and then, nothing. It went away, replaced by the startling news of an upcoming royal wedding and snow on the East Coast, in winter no less.

Now that some calm has returned, it’s time to consider a few things. I have no idea what motivates wikileakers, but the public reason is to broaden public engagement in the business of government by making public as much private government correspondence as possible. It raises serious questions about the limits of privacy, candor and truth telling.

If truth telling is a moral imperative, does it have any limits or mitigating conditions? Of course it is the old Kantian question that has been answered in many ways, but I guess it’s worth wading into once more because it never has been resolved to universal satisfaction.

I’m reminded of a flip remark I made just a few days ago that caused my sister-in-law to ask, “Don’t you have any filters on what you say?” Filters? Apparently it is important to sometimes filter what one says in order to maintain a semblance of harmony. Filtering implies that what might be unnecessarily hurtful not be made public, even if it is a truth, because making it public will do no one good and may do harm. The letter to the Ephesians enjoins us to speak truth in love for the purpose of building up, not tearing down. We all know people who use words, even truthful words, as weapons of intimidation and malicious hurt. On the other hand, we also know people who, out of fear or an obsession with maintaining harmony, ignore, withhold and deny essential truths that need to be recognized. Where is the boundary and what does it look like?

If this is true about our personal lives and relationships, might it also be true about the ebb and flow of communications between agents of government? Are there conditions under which communications ought to be privileged? If filtering is the right thing to do under particular conditions, what are those conditions?

A common text word is TMI, too much information. What you are telling me is more than I need or want to know given the status of our relationship. Perhaps there are people who need and want to know the details of your love life, physical ailments, tidbits of juicy gossip, or breadth and depth of your knowledge, but I am not one of them. TMI can also occur when someone who knows a truth about another makes it public to the harm of the other. TMI at the personal level can have disastrous effects. Lives can be ruined. That’s one reason why the law recognizes certain rights to privacy as in doctor-patient, lawyer-client and pastor-penitent.

Is the same true in the public arena of international relations and public policy? Do agents of government need the ability to communicate truthfully with each other but withhold it from the public to protect truth telling? What might be the appropriate limits?

The corporate world is adamant about its right to privacy, secrecy and privileged communication. Patents, copyrights, trade secrets and the complex negotiations surrounding buyouts and mergers are the stuff of civil lawsuits and criminal investigations. Is there any parallel between what is legal for the corporate world and what is necessary in the realm of public policy?

These are not easy questions. We do not want to be lied to by our government, especially when lives are at stake. We are angered by stonewalled secrecy that prevents us from knowing who has been invited to influence important public policies. On the other hand, we recognize the need for secrecy (call it confidentiality) in everything from weapons development to matters that, if made public, could jeopardize the public welfare.

As for wikileakers, they seem to me to be no more than common gossips about whom scripture has much to say:

Prov. 11:13 A gossip goes about telling secrets, but one who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a confidence.

Prov. 20:19 A gossip reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a babbler.

Sir. 19:6 ...but one who hates gossip has less evil.

Sir. 19:12 Like an arrow stuck in a person’s thigh, so is gossip inside a fool.

2Cor. 12:20 For I fear that when I come, I may find you not as I wish, and that you may find me not as you wish; I fear that there may perhaps be quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder.

Monday, December 20, 2010

I'm pondering a piece on the ethics of Wikileaks and kindred sites. That also has to consider the practical question of what conversations and information are best kept reasonably confidential so that candid thoughts can be shared and complex issues worked out through the sifting of bad ideas, good ideas and crazy ideas.

Maybe you already have some thoughts on the matter and would like to drop me a line, which you can do either here as a comment or in a "private" e-mail. In any case, what you offer may influence what I eventually write, so have at it.

A clergy friend of mine (BA, M.Div., D.Min.) is without full-time work of any kind. Her position as an associate in a medium size congregation was eliminated for budget reasons. Two years have passed, and she has struggled along with several part-time minimum wage secular jobs and Sunday supply work. That means no health insurance. To be sure, she will get appropriate care through the largesse of local hospitals if something catastrophic happens, but there is no routine or preventive care.

I know her story because she is my friend. In a nation of high unemployment, and with re-employment tending toward temporary and part time jobs at low pay with no benefits, how many other stories just like it could tell of those who are sliding into a dark and lonely pit just like the one she is in.

Each week the local paper features yet another family for whom a fund has been set up to help pay the enormous costs of cancer care, transplant surgery or some other hideous medical expense. They are featured because friends have become their public advocates trying to marshall a charitable community response to an extraordinary need. But how extraordinary is it when it is a weekly occurrence and probably just a glimpse of other needs by other persons for whom there are no advocates, at least not advocates who know how to get newspaper publicity? Besides, the many local funds, however well meaning, never raise more than a fraction of the costs that will have to be borne somewhere by somebody.

Are these the people whom some commentators claim just need a kick in the butt to get them going? Are they the weaklings who should be taking care of themselves and not whining for a public handout? No, they re not. When we tell their stories one at a time they become real people in need of real help, and, at least to me, that help needs to come not from inadequate and chancy charity, but through a renewed public commitment to a different kind of health care system for our country.

I read somewhere that that great humanitarian Josef Stalin said that the death of one man was a tragedy but the death of thousands was a statistic. We have allowed voices from one side of the debate to speak as if facts were opinions, and the collective misery of thousands mere statistics. We can do better than that.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

I have mixed feelings about earmarks. I know that they are a popular symbol of congressional pork, wasteful spending, and all the rest, but I also know that, as a percentage of federal expenditures, they are small potatoes. Some part of them are payback for political favors. Some part of them are intended to help boost a local economy with unneeded projects that have little to do with sustained economic vitality. My own favorite targets are military earmarks for things the military does not want or need. But just as often, I think earmarks come from the wisdom of deeper knowledge about local needs that a member of congress has gained through close working relationships with community leaders. My community, for instance, benefits from small earmarks that are helping us plan for the completion of much needed highway improvements. Universities, especially Land Grant universities, benefit from earmarked grants that lead toward improvements in agriculture and agricultural products. Inner city neighborhood benefit from earmarked grants that help build cultural infrastructure. And so on.

I’m slightly amused by those who angrily harrumph about earmarks as if stopping them would balance the budget. It’s not just a naive harrumph, it’s ignorant. And let’s face it, there is something mildly amusing about harrumphing ignoramuses.

What helps is to be able to plainly see in the legislation both the earmarks and their sponsors. That way they are easily open to public scrutiny. If you are interested in taking a look for yourself, ardent earmark foe Senator Coburn of Oklahoma has published a database of earmarks in the current legislation. He may be one of the great harrumphers, but at least he’s not ignorant about it.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Image by bunchofpants via FlickrBlue Christmas services are becoming more common, and I think it’s a good idea. They are the honest recognition that this is a very difficult season for many people. Most of us know from our own experience that the jolly party scene is an over rated myth in any case. Yet the nightly television barrage of sentimental holiday stories speaks to the deep seated human desire for something wonderful to happen during the season. In their own way I think they also remind us that the likelihood of it happening is mostly the imaginary creation of script writers.

It gets complicated by the fact that we have two seasons going on at the same time. One is a secularized holiday combining the best of European pagan solstice celebrations, often with a thin veneer of the Christmas story. There is a lot about that that I like, especially the decorations and cookies.

The other is so different. It’s the season in which we remember the shame of a young unmarried pregnant woman, her reluctant and equally shamed husband to be, several hard journeys, a lack of common hospitality, danger, murder and escape in which somehow, and most improbably, God’s presence is made known through choirs of angels that almost no one hears, a handful of shepherds, a couple of loony prophets, and some wayward astrologers who could read the stars but not the politics of the times.

I do love the way we dress it up with children’s pageants, massed choirs, music filled midnight masses and all the rest. I wouldn’t change any of it. But I also know how powerful the story, in its raw form, can be for those who are struggling through this blue time of the year. It is that raw story in which, as John says, a light shines that cannot be defeated by darkness. Here, in the dark and among the least of us, is where God is present, hope is present, and our brokenness, the brokenness of the world, begins to be healed. It’s the raw story that I talked about over a cup of coffee with the victim of a Sunday morning house fire for whom there is nothing merry about this Christmas. Trees, lights, parties, carols and all the rest have become repugnant. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire is a frightening thought. But the raw story of the nativity of our Lord is a story of hope. I wonder how we best offer that gift this year? How can I? How can you?

Saturday, December 11, 2010

I’m an Episcopalian who grew up in the Lutheran Church where, with most of my friends, I underwent the arduous multiyear task of studying for confirmation. I don’t recall falling in love with bible study or the catechism, but I do recall wanting to learn more and dig deeper. The questions so carefully scripted in Luther’s catechism were interesting, but they were not my questions. We were to memorize his carefully scripted answers, but they were not my answers. I’m not sure how I got confirmed. Maybe the pastor just got tired and gave up. For whatever reason, God type questions kept me interested in many other things.

European history revolved around God questions. Philosophy emerged from God questions. America, with it’s Puritans, Pilgrims, Virginia Anglicans, Maryland Catholics and Rhode Island Baptists lurched into being with God questions. I was fortunate to have a high school civics teacher who used an anthology of great thinkers as our text book, and that introduced me to Augustine, Luther, Calvin, DesCartes, the Enlightenment, Edwards, American pragmatism and more. The theme of God questions ran through them all.

As I reflect on my life, I’ve had a generous taste of just about everything and anything one could imagine or hope for. I always attributed that to my poor judgment and intellectual curiosity, but the experts now say it’s a learning disorder affecting those with short attention spans. What dull people they must be, those experts I mean.

Anyway, here I am in my late sixties with several universities and a thirty year career in government, teaching and business preceding yet another career in ordained ministry, still interested in God questions that keep on changing and answers that remain elusive. That drives some people crazy, especially those whom I have led and taught. Why can’t I just say what is irrevocably true like other pastors do? One of them said that what he wanted was a one handed priest so he wouldn’t have to keep on hearing “on the one hand this, but on the other hand that.”

It turns out that I am a thoroughly convicted Nicene Christian who, nevertheless, happily engages in arguments with the creed because it is too Greek and not Jewish enough. I am an ardent Anglican rooted in the Mennonite writing of Yoder and whatever Rene Gerard is. I love Polkinghorne even though I understand only half of what he writes and none of what he says (some English accents are meant only for the written word). I look forward to becoming an educated man when I grow up, but it seems an unlikely thing. I managed to get through grade school without memorizing the multiplication tables, and that alone dooms me.

With that in mind on this late, rainy, gloomy dark winter day in our fogged in valley, I think a glass of wine and Times crossword is in order.

Friday, December 10, 2010

When does a book become holy? A clergy friend of mine got into trouble when he tossed a bible onto the floor as a demonstration that we do not worship a book, we worship God. As an object lesson, it was less than successful. For many in the congregation, the book itself, its pages, cover and binding, represented the physical manifestation of God’s Holy Word and presence far more than any sacrament. I found it difficult to get some adult learners to dare to write in their bibles, especially to write notes. Some years ago we organized a clean up crew to tackle the church basement. In it we found boxes of bibles all turned to green mold. Several were simply unable to witness the disposal of them into the dumpster.

So when does a book become holy?

I’ll share my own story. Each day I rise to pray the Morning Office guided by the Daily Office Book in two volumes. The set I have been using is about fifteen years old. The imitation leather covers are tattered. The bindings are broken. Pages are ripped with some falling out. Others are coffee stained, and a variety of hand written notes overlap one another. The volumes might have survived another year of gentle home use, but we travel a lot, and one more round of being shoved into a suitcase or backpack would have destroyed them. So I bought a new set and began using it with the onset of Advent a few weeks ago.

What to do with my old, beat up and essentially unusable Daily Office Book (in two volumes)? I tossed the first volume into the recycle trash, then sat looking at it and thinking. It was only a book, but it had been my daily companion for years. Through it I had opened my heart and mind to conversation with God, more thoroughly studied scripture, been inspired and repelled by psalms, and discovered that prayer, scripture and daily life in community are all part of the same thing. That inanimate book resting in the trash had become a powerful symbol of the presence of the living God. It had become a holy book.

I took it out and squeezed it into a case next to its companion volume where it will rest in peace until that day when our children assemble to clean out the house and decide what to do with all the useless junk their parents had accumulated.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

For us green beans has come to mean a day consumed by simple, unimportant tasks that could have been accomplished in an hour or less if we had more important things to do. Why green beans? It has to do with a long ago visit to my mother-in-law, who was rapidly sliding into Alzheimer's. She spent an entire day buying green beans at a nearby grocery store. She had to remember, forget and remember again, that it was green beans she was after. Then it was a matter of getting to the store, remembering why she was there, buying the beans, finding her way home, remembering that she had done it, remembering why she had done it, and remembering to cook them for dinner. All in all it was an exhausting day. We smile now and joke about our own days of getting nothing done but green beans. There was no humor in it then because we didn’t fully understand what was happening to her.

I am more aware now than I was then about how much courage it takes for one entering dementia to keep on with the ordinary demands of daily life; how hard even the simplest tasks can become. It’s not as if they don’t know. Not long ago I was on a hotel balcony and overheard a wife yelling at her husband to pay attention and remember a certain thing. I could tell by their voices that her anger was the anger of a broken heart, and his response was from a man knowing that he should remember, trying very hard to remember, and equally broken hearted at not being able to do it. What was he trying to remember? Whatever it was it was just green beans. What is important is love. But I digress, which is something I can do, sometimes at length.

That brings me to Green Bay, another household code phrase. Once upon a time our son, then a teenager, asked me about Green Bay. I had done a little consulting there not long before, and so regaled him with everything I knew about it from history, to demographics, to economics to politics. After my introductory remarks of about twenty minutes, he explained that he only wanted to know about the Packers, not too much. That teenager is now in his mid-forties, and I have forgot everything I ever knew about Green Bay. Just the same, his mother will silently mouth tImage by Getty Images via @daylifeo me now and then, “Green Bay,” as a not so subtle hint that I have gone on too long about that which is of little interest to anyone else. It can happen.

Green beans and Green Bay. Preachers, I suspect, have a tendency toward each, perhaps more than the average person. Parish councils, by whatever name, wallow in them.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Image by hickory hardscrabble via FlickrThe little rural church I serve, along with two other retired clergy, has two dozen members, if you carefully count everyone whether there or not. No one is young. The church growth gang (now called church transformation) calls it a declining and dying congregation. The thing is, it’s been there for over a hundred years and has never had more than a couple dozen members. People come, people go, people die, people come. Now and then it has tolerated clergy attempting to be full time, but, for the most part, it has got along fine with a long line of supply clergy.

Right now they have the services of three experienced, well respected pastors who provide both continuity and variety. A skeptical colleague wondered out loud about how long they will last when we are gone. My guess is at least another hundred years. Fifty years before I came on the scene they were served by a local professor who was also an Episcopal priest. Others have included clergy skilled in mission work, new clergy trying out their wings, another professor, and even a high church priest who may have been the only one who knew what to do with a maniple.

That’s all be beside the point. Small rural congregations don’t really depend on seminary educated clergy. It’s nice to have them, but not a necessity. They don’t even depend on a flow of new families with young children. They do depend on the economic viability of the towns they are in. Dying towns beget dying congregations. But if a town can sustain itself, an otherwise healthy, small rural congregation will just keep on going. It has more to do with the spirit of the place and the Spirit that fills it than with experts on church growth and transformation.

What might be the nature of that Spirit filled spirit? From what I can tell, it is the genuine love and care between members, and for the community, that transcend the petty irritants of small town life in which there are no secrets. It’s the joy of worshiping whether with or without music. It’s the making of parish decisions, sometimes with more than a little contention, right in the midst of a Sunday morning service. It’s the embrace of whomever comes in the door, no matter who they are, with a naive lack of awareness that their embrace may be more than a stranger desires or can stand. It’s the genuine concern for others in the community who are suffering or in need.

It requires one more thing. It requires an openness to a subtle indwelling of the Holy Spirit. By subtle presence I mean an atmosphere of the Spirit’s presence, unseen and unheard, yet there. I don’t think you can make that happen whether by loud proclamation or through sophisticated consulting. A small rural congregation without that subtle presence may indeed be declining and dying, and we have all seen that happen. One with that subtle presence will probably continue from generation to generation as long as there are generations to be had.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

The gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Advent has that wonderfully scornful line rumbling out of John’s mouth, “You brood of vipers.” For the first time, I began to think about where else it is uttered. A total of three times in Matthew’s gospel, once from the lips of John the Baptist and twice from Jesus himself. It is directed at the religious and political elite all three times. It appears once in Luke, also from Jesus.

Each time it is connected with the need to demonstrate deeds worthy of a repentant life. John warns the Sadducees and Pharisees who were coming, not to watch but to undergo his baptism of repentance, to bear fruit worthy of repentance. In Matthew 12 Jesus also demands fruit worthy of repentance and suggests that those fruits are found not only in deeds but also in words. Later, in Matthew 23, he demands deeds of justice, mercy, faith, and an honest self examination that turns one away from a life of greed, self-indulgence and unmerited self-confidence as a moral guide to others.

Whatever Matthew was up to, using the “brood of vipers” line in three strongly worded condemnations of smug self-confidence in a loudly proclaimed faith that bears little fruit has got to demand our attention. I don’t think Matthew intended his audience to read it as a curious bit of history about John, Jesus and some self-righteous religious types hanging around in Palestine. I think that these words are intended to come crashing through the ages right into our own hearts and minds. They are about us.

Our casual identity as Christians can too often take the form of regular church attendance, pledging and maybe even engagement in bible study or some worthy project, but without any connection to daily living in other areas. On the other hand, we can also be tempted to confuse faith with an overly compulsive obsession in the rituals of worship. As did the Pharisees and Sadducees, we come to Jesus seeking his company and lingering on his words. We come for the comfort and consolation of Jesus meek and mild and get a tongue lashing for not bearing fruit worthy of repentance. Wow! Who wants that? Is it possible we should actually pay attention this time? Or maybe we could just hurry to the manger to adore the little baby who demands nothing more than his mother’s milk and a clean diaper.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Imagination seems to be a heretical word for some Christians. If something is imaginary it is made up, not real, untrue. In a recent discussion about some stories from the bible I used the phrase “in my imagination” to explore what some of the characters might have been thinking or felt. I imagined, for instance, that Matthew’s readers would have understood his apocalyptic renderings better than we because they had experienced the destruction of Jerusalem. I imagined what was going through the mind of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus robe in search of healing. I wondered if we might try to imagine what was going in the minds of those left treading water as Noah floated off.

Those imaginings were not well received by some. To introduce the imaginary into bible study is to pollute the pure, obvious, literal and holy meaning of the words that God has given us with that which is nothing more than made up fiction. Oh how sinful! Asserted one participant, he did not imagine but knew what some of the people in the bible thought and felt because the Holy Spirit had spoken to him about it. He reminded me of a former parishioner. Most every conversation began with her saying that “it has been given to me to tell you...” Neither of them could be accused of any guile. A little gullibility on one hand and avoidance of responsibility on the other, but not guile.

The episode reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother many years ago when she was appalled at my use of the word story to refer to anything from the bible since to her a story was a fairy tale, but I digress.

It seems to me that it is only through imagination that we are able to wallow in scripture, probe its depths and discover the new ways in which God may be speaking to us through its words. But, I imagine, that can be a fearful thing to many. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God whose Word is living, active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

A well rehearsed static religion is safer than one that is dynamic, moving and often unpredictable. For one thing, having settled on it, one is sure to avoid being misled by false prophets and phony messiahs, unless, of course, they are the ones who have defined the terms and conditions of the well rehearsed static religion. If some interpretation is needed, as it always is, it’s safer to ascribe it to the infallible work of the Holy Spirit than to take responsibility for one’s own fallible thinking. Finally, it relieves one of the burden of wrestling with scripture as Jacob wrestled with the angel.

For my part, our ability to imagine is a part of what it is to be created in the image of God. We cannot, as God can, imagine a universe and speak it into being, but we can imagine, and from our imagination bring much into being. Consider art, literature, developments in science and technology, and, most of all, our ability to imagine new ways of understanding God’s Holy Word.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Like many small communities, Waitsburg, Washington has a weekly newspaper that is widely read and relied upon. And, like most small town weeklies, it has a column devoted to news of the past. Below are two brief items from 1885 that speak for themselves.

The trial of James Close for the killing of two Indians held the attention of the court all day Saturday and was given to the jury until 6 o’clock in the evening. After a number of ballots, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of assault and battery. Among thinking people the verdict is a strange one as it makes killing an Indian a misdemeanor and not a crime.

Last Monday morning the lifeless body of J.A. Keats was discovered hanging to an improvised gallows - two rails and a cross bar - the road side between Pendleton and Adams, Oregon, the work of questionable vigilantes.

Sadly, I imagine that one might find similar news from the past, and not so distant past, in most of the communities where each of us lives. It makes me wonder what inspires so many people to put so much faith in the moral superiority of “the good old days.”

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thanksgiving has always been a puzzling holiday for me. Feasts of thanksgiving to God, or gods, have been a part of human history for a very long time. Our American Thanksgiving has it’s origins in an improbable myth of happy Pilgrims and happy Indians joyfully gathered at a feast that is reenacted each fall at elementary schools all across the country.

I suppose that one could offer a psychological explanation of our fascination with the day and it’s story as a mild form of admission that this happy, peaceful melding of European and native cultures is the way it was supposed to have been, and by remembering it the way we do, we hope to, perhaps, change the way it really was, or, at least, disremember the way it really turned out. On a more optimistic note, it could even be a way for us to remind ourselves of how we might begin living into the future.

For my part, I am grateful that this most secular of all holidays is the one holiday that has not yet become a commercialized free-for-all. It still remains a day for gathering, whether at home, the local rescue mission or some other place, to eat, visit, tell stories and remember that for which we give grateful thanks. The Macy’s parade and a football game have become permanent markers of the day, taking their places right along with turkeys and pies. It may the be kickoff to Black Friday when the mythical gentle merging of cultures becomes the reality of shoving hostilities at big box stores, but that can wait. For the moment, at least, we can pause and be thankful. As we prepare to joyfully welcome family into our home, I am also grateful for the years that we had a Thanksgiving feast at church. People came because they really wanted to be there, really enjoyed each other’s company, and really filled the place with great food. There was something very special about Thanksgiving as community.

May each of you be blessed this Thanksgiving Day, and may each of us give thanks to God our Father for all his gifts so freely bestowed upon us.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

I could start by saying that Advent is an odd season of conflicting lessons: part hope, part despair, part mercy, part judgment, part delight, part fear. Moreover, it’s plopped right down on top of the secular Christmas dominated by shopping, Santa, schmaltzy television, and the myth of cheer filled parties with which most of us have little personal experience. I could start that way, but why? Those of us who observe the season through liturgy and the lectionary know all of that. Many of my more Evangelical clergy friends have long since synced the themes of their services with the timing of appropriate television holiday reruns. Advent, to them, is a time for decorating the church and breaking out the Christmas carols. We even have a popular local production of “The Gospel According to Scrooge” that shamelessly rewrites the Dickens classic.

What I really want to write about revolves around judgment, the second coming, and end times.

The gospel record makes it clear that, while Jesus was capable of, and had the authority, to forgive all of them for what they were doing even as he hung on the cross, judgment of some kind yet lies ahead for each of us. That has to be a terrifying thought. Can I really and truly rely on his promises once my life has been exposed to close examination in every detail? Will he say, “Well Steven your name was penciled into the Book of Life, but I also have a very big eraser, and the audit of your record is not looking too good.”? Maybe this is where a true leap of faith is required. Will his promise of mercy trump judgment? What if there was not enough water in my baptism? What if I failed to use the right words in my profession of faith? What if my many confessions and attempts at repentance were insufficient? What if I went to the wrong church or none at all? Good grief, I can remember the sense of guilt I felt when called to the principal’s office even when I hadn’t done anything about which to feel guilty. When you get right down to it, one of the big questions of Advent is how willing are we to trust God to be the God revealed in the manger and on the cross?

Which brings me to the second coming. There are elements in each of the gospels and several of the Pauline letters, as well as the entire book of Revelation, that vividly portray a triumphant second coming in power and glory to vanquish all God’s enemies, and, because we are God’s children, all of our enemies too. You cannot work your way around that. What troubles me about that is how similar that vision is to the messianic expectations of the Jews of Jesus’ day. It’s almost like saying that when Jesus comes back he’ll get it right this time and finish the job the way he was supposed to. I wonder. If “It is finished” is what Jesus said from the cross, then it is finished. As I read it, what happened on the cross and at the open grave is the completion of all that had to happen. Indeed, as I read the Revelation to John I keep coming across passages declaring completion, not of some act yet to come but of all that has already happened. I’m not sure what the writers were up to, but this I know. Too many have been misled too often by false prophets scaring the daylights out of gullible people about the imminence of that day. What we need to do is keep our eyes on Jesus and follow where he has led without concern for any of that.

And that means that I’m not waiting around or preparing for his second coming. Nor am I overly concerned about end times. My end, at least in earthly terms, will arrive soon enough. The time I now live in will be ended, which also means that his second coming will have occurred. What will happen to me when I die? Perhaps my soul will rest in cold storage until the general resurrection. Perhaps I’ll be welcomed into Abraham’s bosom until I am ready for my new and glorious body. Perhaps it will all happen at once. I’m not sure it makes much difference, or that I will care. However, if they sing Amazing Grace at my funeral, I will come back and haunt them. It’s an amazing hymn but it gets old after so many repetitions.

So what am I to do as I wait for my judgment, my end times, the second coming of my Christ in which I go to him this time? I guess I’ll get on with learning more about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a Christian, a proclaimer of the Good News, and see what I can do about improving on a very spotty record. Advent is a good time to reflect on that. Any advice is most welcome.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The FLICKER is back. This time with a double attack, one on the north side of the house and the other on the south. It made significant progress in drilling holes while we were gone. This is war! I am now armed with a soft-pellet BB gun pistol. I don’t want to kill it. I don’t even want to hurt it. I just want to harass it enough to make it leave. I don’t know how it knows, but it does. It used to sit up there mocking me as I tossed pebbles at it from too far away. The moment I got home from K Mart, it changed tactics from long term siege to hit and run raids.

Larsen, I keep yelling at it, Larsen. Larsen’s house is freshly painted, a tasty newly decorated Flicker treat. Go next door and eat their house. They’re gone most the time anyway and probably wont notice. No, it just sits in Larsen’s tree making noises at me, waiting for me to go back inside.

Lord, when I pray each morning to save us from the time of trial, I am talking about that damn flicker. I’ll bet that when Paul complained about the thorn that kept him humble there was a flicker involved. When Luther unleashed the ink pot at the wall, there was a flicker involved. When the rebels fired on Ft. Sumpter they were aiming at a flicker. The crash of the housing market is due to flicker damage. OK, enough of this. I need to go do a little target practice.

Spiritual but not religious. Good Grief! Not that again. How often do we have to go over that ground?

An ongoing locker room conversation led to an hour or two over coffee. If you are spiritual but not religious, I asked, what is religion? He had a quick, definitive answer. Religion is to be forced into a community where you are told what to think and believe, and be threatened with eternal damnation if you don’t. This was religion as he knew it from his youth, and it seemed unlikely to him that there could be any other kind. Moreover, the religion of his younger life asserted that one’s personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ was all that mattered, it was an individual thing, and if that’s the case, what good is religion or the weekly gathering of so-called believers whose claims to be Christian are highly suspect based on their daily behavior?

What if religion is something different from that, I asked? We explored what, for him, was a brand new idea. That religion, the Christian religion, is made up of the rituals and traditions that serve as conduits through which we enter into a more profound communion with God. That no one set of traditions and rituals serves all people well, and some people not at all. That however important our individual relationship with God through Christ might be, we cannot lose sight of the fact that Jesus was all about restoring, healing and calling people into community. There is something essential about being spiritual that can only be found in community with others.

Consider that our whole conversation was an act of community in community: a lapsed fundamentalist talking with an Episcopal priest in a coffee shop owned and staffed by Greek Orthodox. It was church, but only for a moment, and it depended on there being other churches, organized, in buildings, centers of regular worship, places from which the Word is sent out into the world.

I wonder where our hour or so will lead. Maybe another conversation some day. My desire is for doors to be opened through which he can encounter the love of God in Christ who commands faith, but faith not chained by fundamentalist dogma, rather a faith in which he is invited in to conversation and community with God Almighty. He may never join a religion, but perhaps he will make enough peace with it so that religion is, for him, no longer the enemy of spirituality.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Today I heard a sermon on the durability of hope embedded in Isaiah’s image of the peaceful kingdom that stands against the transient coming and passing of technological change. The message was illustrated by a couple of YouTube “Did You Know” videos about the accelerating speed of technological change. While the intent of the sermon was to anchor us in the greater reality God’s salvation promises, the immediate effect was to discomfit some part of the congregation who already feel left behind by obsolete computers, the Internet, social networking, and a society that makes little sense to them. If, as the video claimed, that what we are teaching in our best schools is obsolete before the kids even graduate, how can anyone ever hope to keep up with the knowledge needed to succeed?

The answer is that keeping up with operational knowledge of the latest in technology is not the most important thing to teach. In fact it’s impossible. Moreover, technological change is only one aspect of change in contemporary life. Social, economic and political change is fast, accelerating and global. Coping with that requires a different kind of teaching, and modern day Luddites digging in their heels to slow things down, or turn them back, may gain a little public traction for a while, but are doomed to failure in the end.

More important is to ground students in the discipline of life long learning; in the art of using creative reason to engage the unknown and unpredictable; and in the wisdom bequeathed to us from generations past. The ability to quickly accommodate one’s self to rapid changes is a worthy skill, even a necessary skill. But without a sense of direction and intentionality, one becomes not much more than a human pin ball being banged around by the direction and intentions of others. Some marketers depend on that, but that’s for another time.

I made the point in a recent post that too many, maybe most, adult Christians operate from a faith based on no more than an inadequate fifth or sixth grade Sunday School curriculum. If what I think about the need for life long learning in the secular world is true, it is even more important in the world of the Church. It’s more important because the kingdom is more important than what is happening with technology, society, economics and politics. While everything else has only transient existence, the kingdom Isaiah envisioned twenty-five hundred years ago, the kingdom Jesus said was at hand two thousand years ago, is the same kingdom that is at hand today and will be tomorrow. How can we know that if we become intent on keeping up with technology but are complacent about living with a juvenile faith? How can we know that if we teach our children how to be life long learners about everything except God? The three legged stool of Scripture,Tradition and Reason is more than a decorative Reformation artifact. It is the key to a mature Christian Faith.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

I took a class today to get recertified in CPR. It’s something I have a tendency to let lapse for a year or two before finally getting to it. It’s amazing how the protocol has changed over the years. I was first certified at 16 as a part of lifeguard training. Not long after I had to use that skill twice with the old back press arm lift method. As it turned out, both victims lived. As the years passed I had to do CPR once more, this time using chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing. That victim died. It was a long time ago and I hope never to do it again, but the training is vital to being prepared.

Not only have CPR protocols changed, so has the equipment now available to those providing first aid. Your local Red Cross and most medical supply stores sell small collapsible face masks to aid in rescue breathing. At the same time there is now a much higher reliance on chest compression done rapidly for a long time than on rescue breathing. Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) analyze heart rhythm and instruct first aiders on when a shock is needed. Cell phones summon help from almost any location. Most communities are now served by paramedics who bring advanced life support services to the scene, or well trained EMTs who provide the best in basic life support. What a difference from the converted hearse with driver and marginally trained attendant that were the standards of my youth.

It seems to me that clergy especially ought to be able to perform CPR. After all, we encounter people at their worst and most vulnerable moments when they are under the greatest amount of stress. The parish from which I retired also has two AED units, one near the usher’s table and the other in the sacristy. May they never be used, but should the need arise, there are enough trained parishioners and staff to use them.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Miroslav Volf wrote a masterful piece in the November 2nd issue of The Christian Century how Christians understand the Trinitarian God as One and God as Love as opposed to the ordinary ways in which the Muslim world thinks that Christians believe. I even sent a copy of it to my nephew who has wondered about these things. Yet, as masterful as Volf was, I wonder if he might need to spend more time explaining that to Christians than to Muslims. More particularly, perhaps he needs to spend more time teaching pastors about it. Oh wait, he’s already spent a lifetime doing that. Right, well, moving on.

Consider the Apostles’ Creed. It is a straightforward, literal statement of faith, and then it suddenly veers into metaphor by saying that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. There it is in plain language, two separate and independent beings, one of whom is next to, inferior to and not the same as the other. Oh, we say, but that’s a metaphor. OK, so why not take everything else in the creed as metaphor? Who gets to say that this phrase is metaphor and the others aren’t?

The problems gets played out in another way through the common language of Christian godtalk. Some churches, and many average Christians, are stuck on the word Jesus. God, as Father, is little more than a space holder used (along with the well worn ‘just’) between every fourth or fifth word of a prayer. Occasionally someone will go through spasms of Holy Spirit language. That usually happens as part of an argument about how their baptism is more authentic than yours, or that the brilliant idea they want you to adopt is a gift directly from the Spirit.

I’m not sure there is an easy way around this. It is not easy to apprehend the concept of God as One yet known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is impossible to comprehend it. It is comforting to know God as both transcendent and intimate, but, as for me, I have to choose one or the other. I cannot hold them together in the same moment.

We need to be more disciplined about teaching those under our care about the importance of the Trinity, giving them ways to more comfortably use Trinity language in ordinary conversation. As it is, we generally devote to that just one Sunday a year, Trinity Sunday, a Sunday conveniently located near Memorial Day, and, if we are lucky, sloughed off onto a seminarian. A sin to which I can only plead mea culpa.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I recently wrote about the temporary community that rapidly developed among the 1300 passengers on our month long cruise in the Pacific, and said I would have more on that later. Welcome to later.

What surprised me was the ease and speed of community formation. Some were organized by ship’s staff around shared interests such as bridge, trivia and exercise. Others were spontaneous but developed in venues, such as the pool and theme oriented bars, designed for that to happen.

In a sense there were three distinct community groups on board. First was the permanent crew of the navigation, deck, engineering and hotel departments. They are Holland America employees, most having, or intending to have, long careers with the company. Second was the temporary crew of entertainers and spa and gym staff. Their time aboard is comparatively short and they are not likely to make a career out of serving on cruise ships. Third was the boatload of passengers who, on a cruise as long as this one, quickly formed their own distinct community. What I want to discuss is the passenger community.

Most people have asked us about the average age of the passengers. Considering that it was a month long voyage on a somewhat smaller ship that prides itself on a certain subdued dignity, the passengers were almost all retired with equal distributions of passive, active, physically fit, less physically fit, and females outnumbering males by some small amount. They were almost all white. More were from western North America, but there was a large contingent of east coasters and a few midwesterners. Some people were on their trip of a lifetime. Some claimed to have been on 20 or more cruises. Others were frequent world travelers, but not regulars on cruises. My unverified guess is that the average age was about 75.

Cabin class was not a significant factor in community formation or recognition of status. With one exception all public spaces and services are equally available to all regardless of cabin class. Unless you are rude enough to ask, how much someone paid or what class of cabin they occupied was irrelevant. A deck devoted to the largest staterooms with a private lounge and concierge had no bearing on anything else going on, and it was accessible to anyone who wanted to wander through. There was one other anomaly. One group of passengers were members of a travel group that buys up unsold cabin space at the last minute for “cut rate” prices. They spent the first week together with a certain celebratory smugness about how clever they were to get such a deal. Some people opted for evening dining at one of two fixed seatings, which meant that they spent each night dining with the same people. Others preferred to take their chances with open seating. That was our choice, which meant that we got to meet many others at random tables of four, six or even eight.

Like any community, passengers tended to congregate in something like affinity groups, some of which were organized and quickly came into being. The bridge players were undoubtedly the first to find each other and form bonds that extended throughout the day and voyage. Other instantaneous groups such as Friends of Bill W, daily worship services, bingo enthusiasts, trivia nuts, etc., enabled people to meet each other and possibly develop friendships that could extend to other parts of the day or trip.

In a more organic way, groups tended to form around those who spent much of their day around the pool, in the hot tubs, on the aft deck, or gathering in one of the bars for drinks, music or dancing. I imagine that each of these venues was designed not only for certain activities but also to creation the conditions in which spontaneous communities might come into being. Moreover, on a longer voyage such as this, the role of the cruise director has much to do with facilitation, monitoring and aiding the formation of community.

The point is that small group social bonds and friendships came into being that recognized their place in and connection to the larger community of shipboard life. To be sure, people could not go elsewhere for community. Either they found it aboard, or they didn’t find it at all. Small group leaders emerged, not without some bumping and shoving, in many ways. Those with strong, assertive personalities were the first to make their play, but it all depended on whether anyone was willing to pay attention to them. Skill and knowledge about a particular event or activity generally won out. As important was the ability to find ways to welcome others into the group and make a place for them.

I wondered if there were any observations that could be applied to congregations. Mega churches seem to have discovered how to engineer conditions under which community can be formed, but I’m more interested in the small congregations that populate most places. How could we be more intentional about designing and maintaining venues leading to spontaneous community development? How could we be more intentional about organizing affinity oriented activities that would attract persons into community? How could we more creatively understand how our congregations are subsets of the larger community in which we are located? How could we free lay persons to explore their full potential as leaders without having to chair committees or serve on councils? Most important, how could we better do all of this so that everything points toward God? It seems to me that the week’s principle worship service is key. It sets the tone and expectations for everything else. So what sort of tone and expectations emanate from it?

Thursday, November 4, 2010

I have a friend who washes windows for a living. I don’t know what he used to do. According to him he raised horses, made a lot of money, owned everything he wanted and drank heavily. He more or less stumbled into Jesus through an introduction from another friend of mine, an Adventist pastor. Now he and Jesus are tight, he’s been sober for five or six years, and he washes windows for a living. But I digress.

We got to talking the other day, and he wondered what we would do if we didn’t have God. Together we decided that we would have to invent a god, which, of course, is precisely what people do all the time. I think the best inventors of god are atheists. They are very creative in inventing the god in whom they do not believe. Sometimes they stitch together a god out of bits and pieces of scriptural remnants with a trim of Greek, Egyptian or Nordic myth for decoration. Sometimes they invent a god out of the whole cloth of fertile imaginations. In either case credit is due for creativity.

By the way, accolades for creativity do not accrue to would be atheists whose only talent is caustic sarcasm. That takes very little creativity. Consider some of my own writing as a case in point. But again I digress.

Sadly, it's true that we Christians are also fond of creating a god or gods and giving them the name of Christ or God. J.B. Phillips’ 1953 classic, Your God is too Small, or Philip Yancey’s 1995, The Jesus I Never Knew, make that point well. We take limited Sunday school teaching carried into adulthood, combine it with sloppy lessons gained from half listened to sermons, and mix in popularized trash theology to create, for us Christians, a trinity of gods neatly packaged in little boxes from which they are allowed to emerge for the limited purposes we have assigned to them.

Why do you suppose that is? Are we afraid to let God be God? Is there something threatening about allowing our own limits of knowledge and ignorance be transcended by that which is not under our control?

I wrote earlier about my friend the Rev. Gretchen Rehberg who, when asked if prayer works, says no. No, if by prayer you mean asking or telling God what to do and then sitting back to see if God does it. God desires conversation, communion, even arguing it out, but how scary is that? Maybe God will have something to say that I don’t want to hear. Maybe God will want to hear something I don’t want to say. Maybe I’ll be forced to see something in me I don’t want to see. Better to keep God in a box for occasional display.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

One of our onboard lectures was devoted to an overview of changes brought to the life of the South Pacific through successive waves of exploration and settlement, with an emphasis on the impact of Europeans and Americans. That raised some questions about the ebb and flow of civilizations and empires in general. Toward the end, one man rose to ask his question in the form of an extended comment. It concerned what would happen to America in the years to come.

The Chinese, he opined, had taken all of our technology and were now using it to gain global supremacy over us. How could we stay Number One? What would happen to us if we were not Number One? Why don’t we wake up and see this as threat to our very way of life? Why don’t we do something about it, and do it now?

He reminded me, in part, of conversations I heard from my elders when I was a young adult. Prior to WWII, the Japanese, they said, had stolen all of our technology. They said the Japanese were not capable of invention, only of copying. The fact that we had to reverse engineer a captured Zero to find out why it was so superior to anything we had going at the time was either unknown or disbelieved. But I digress.

What would happen if we found ourselves no longer the only superpower in the world, nor the world’s largest economy, nor the dominant voice in world economic decision making? I think it might be a very good thing for us. “We’re Number One” is a chant best left to sporting events, and as we all know, this year’s number one crown is an ephemeral thing of no lasting value. It’s good only for a moment of happy, childlike celebration, then it must be set aside.

Losing the title would give us the opportunity to focus more on what it means to be American, to seriously examine the critical threads that make up the fabric of our society: education, health care, equitable justice, taxes fair to all, economic opportunity and the like. Serious questions about what is needed for national defense would become more important than mindless funding of the military. A more pragmatic engagement with the rest of the world would make possible agreements balancing free trade with fair trade. Without the pressure of being Number One, we could get on with the hard work of being better people in a better society.

There is one other advantage to losing the crown to China. They would be the ones everyone loves to hate. Think of what a relief that would be.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Fanning Island is an atoll about midway between Hawaii and Tahiti with a population of a couple of thousand. Its highest point is around ten feet. Once upon a time it may have had strategic value as a cable relay station, but those years are ancient history now. The people who live on Fanning, in the island nation of Kiribati, are impoverished. They have no running water, no electricity, no roads and no other nearby islands with which to engage in routine intercourse. We know about Fanning Island because we stopped there for a day. There is nothing quite like dumping a thousand tourists into a place like that for a day. Thankfully we came and left in waves of several hundred each. The ship we sailed on is the only passenger liner that stops there, and it does so three or four times a year. For a few years a Norwegian liner called each week, but that did not last long. Inter-island freighters also stop by from time to time to make a delivery or perhaps pick up some copra.

Friends have asked us, what do they live on? Mostly it's fruit such as coconut, mango, papaya, and banana; fish from the lagoon; pork from the pigs that every family raises and feral chickens. Schooling of some kind is offered through secondary levels. A local clinic is staffed by a nurse, supplemented by visiting ship’s doctors. Yes, our friends say, but what do they do for a living, how do they earn money? Since there is only one store with not much to sell, earning money to buy things is not something that must have a high priority. However, they do make money from cruise tourists who buy trinkets and make donations to groups of singers, dancers and cute little kids strategically placed along the most common pathways. That money goes to pay for fuel for the island’s half dozen vehicles, two or three small portable generators used to power things that need power on the occasions they need to be used, and a few western goods as well as the makings for trinkets they will sell to the next batch of tourists. A well paid government bureaucrat assigned to the island might make $4.50 a day and be one of the richest men in the place. Otherwise most money is pooled by clan or village.

What keeps them from living in what we know as abject poverty is isolation. If they lived in the midst of an urbanized society, they would be in abject poverty. As it is, they are poor but not needy. Life on Fanning cannot be romanticized. It is not a tropical Eden, but each family does have a home to live in. Food, though simple, is adequate, even abundant at times. Clothing brought in by missionary groups is enough for an equatorial climate. Water can be a problem since it depends on rain, but it does rain. The biggest threat is global warming that may submerge Fanning Island in decades to come.

So what are they missing? Well, health care could be improved. Other than that they seem to be missing television, traffic jams, road rage, Holiday spending binges, martinis, smog, Facebook, etc. Do they have problems? Of course they do. They have teenagers who find ways to do what teenagers do no matter where they are. They are educated. They know there is a wider world out there, and no doubt want to see it. They see the rich tourists come and go, and no doubt would like to find that magic place where all that money and stuff exists for the taking. Just the same, it might do each of us some good to live on Fanning Island for a few months to learn what we don't need, or even want, and to learn also a greater appreciation for what we have.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Individualism, if not rugged individualism, is the publicly dominant theme of today’s American ethos. It goes beyond the apparent popularity of the Tea Party movement with its “Don’t Tread on Me” and “Let Freedom Ring” placards. There is a common grumbling attitude of “I’m not gonna let anyone tell me what to do” that seems to be prevalent among those over fifty and certainly over sixty, especially if they are white, middle class and up. Combine that with an affection for limited government at all levels, a dislike of taxes for any purpose that does not have an immediate selfish benefit, and a sense that “I’ve worked hard for what I have, no thanks to anyone else, and no one is going to take it from me,” and you have a recipe for social chaos.

Put enough of those people on a relatively small ship for a month and it becomes a fascinating experiment in social psychology. For one thing, none of them seemed to be aware of the irony of boldly asserting their self-sufficient individualism while living in the womb of a ship dedicated to anticipating and serving their every need in abundance and to perfection. I was struck by some, a relative few, who assumed the mantle of entitlement, and, like lords of the manor, engaged with staff as if they were their downstairs servants. We were amused by the lady who complained that having spent so much money for the trip she did not expect it to rain. Another person demanded that the ship be smoothed out in rough seas, which, obviously, this captain did not know how to do. A couple we called the Teutonic Duo issued their daily orders for the improved management of everything. Getting into the swing of things, I pulled out my Garmin and said that I must rush to the bridge to let the captain know where we were and where we were headed. Apparently there was no humor in that.

A far greater number acted out their Tea Party independence in another way. Many of our stops required tendering into shore one boat at a time. The ship had a well designed process for doing that quickly and efficiently. Each person going ashore was assigned a ticket for a specific tender. As soon as that tender was available, the ticket number was called over the P.A. so that its passengers could make their way to the gangway on a lower deck. General announcements asked that everyone wait in the theater, lounge or other public space until their number was called, and above all not to congregate in the stairways leading to the gangway. Simple, right? Simple unless enough people decide that they will not be told what to do by anyone, hold themselves exempt from rules they don’t like, and are determined to assume a place of advantage over everyone else. Then, with stairways and the gangway clogged, the entire process grinds to a slow crawl of unhappy old people complaining that the crew does not know what they are doing. It all worked out, and later in the day, after a few drinks, most everyone was happy again.

I suspect that among a majority of passengers there was a blind unawareness of the complex infrastructure, logistical planning and management required to make it all happen. For me, it had metaphorical application to society as a whole, and the complexity of systems needed for modern society to work at all, and for the privileged to enjoy their privileges (I include myself among the privileged). That is particularly true for a republican democracy such as ours with its emphasis on private enterprise as the national pivot point. Individualism, rugged or otherwise, has a certain value and should not be dismissed, but it must live alongside of an equally strong appreciation for the role of community and cooperation. That seems to be missing.

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About Me

Walla Walla, Washington, Way out west in a green valley up against some small mountains, United States

I'm Steve Woolley, a retired small town preacher. I've spent many years in the big city, taught a little in a few colleges, traveled a bit around the globe, done most of the things a man would want to do, and a few that no one should. In the end I'm just a retired country parson.